By Scott Gilfoid: Anthony Joshua says his goal is to become a billionaire in the sport of boxing. The IBF heavyweight champion Joshua (18-0, 18 KOs) says his original goal when he first started out in the pro ranks was to be a millionaire. Now that he’s achieved that, he wants to go past what he sees from ordinary people to that of the billionaire status.
Joshua is going to get a big payday in his next fight against former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko on April 29 on Sky Box Office PPV at Wembley Stadium in London, England. That fight will be the biggest payday of the young 27-year-old Joshua’s career. However, there aren’t a lot of big names out there for Joshua to fight after he gets done with the 41-year-old Klitschko.
“When I first started, the aim was to become a multimillionaire,” said Joshua to GQ. ”But now there are ordinary people, grandmas and granddads, who are worth millions just because of property prices. So the new school of thought is that I need to be a billionaire,”
Gosh, Joshua is starting to sound money hungry. What difference does it make if he has $100 million and $1 billion? It’s not as if he’s going to spend it all unless he throws it away on poor business investments.
Joshua would need to stay healthy for a long, long time in boxing for him to have a chance of making a $1 billion in earnings from the sport. Unfortunately, we’ve already see Joshua suffer injuries in the past at his young age. With all Joshua’s huge body building muscles that’s carrying around, I see injuries being a regular occurrence once he hits his early 30s. Believe me, Joshua is not going to become a billionaire if he’s missing one year at a time due to different physical ailments.
The heavyweight division was dried up completely for a 10year-old period during Wladimir’s championship reign. As such, unless Joshua is interested in fighting a lot of rematches against different guys, he’s likely to come well short of a billion in earnings in his career. The way I figure it, Joshua would need someone like Wladimir to fight 20-30 times for him to get to be a billionaire.
The boxing public would have to be willing to pay for a bunch retread fights for Joshua against guys he always knocked out. There’s a saying, ‘there’s a sucker born every minute,’ but I don’t think the fans are going to be willing to pay to see Joshua beat up on the same guy 30 times.
“Being a millionaire is good, but you have to set your sights higher,” said Joshua. ”If I’m making £10m from my next fight, my next target has to be making 10 times that. And if I get to £100m-150m, why not go for the billion?”
What Joshua doesn’t seem to realize is that his next fight against Wladimir is a rare thing in which he’s facing one of the more popular fighters from the past. It Wladimir years to become popular in Europe. There isn’t an equivalent to Wladimir other than maybe Tyson Fury, but who knows when he’ll be back.
If Joshua does face Fury, it’ll likely be just one fight. Joshua isn’t going to get $100 million per fight facing guys like Dillian Whyte, Dereck Chisora, Kubrat Pulev and Luis Ortiz. I don’t think Joshua can keep fighting at Wembley Stadium against guys like that. I could be wrong. I wouldn’t want to bother seeing those fights because they’re not interesting match-ups.
I think Ortiz would be good if Joshua him fought him RIGHT NOW, but he’s not going to do that. Joshua and his promoter Eddie Hearn don’t seem to be in a big rush to fight the 38-year-old Ortiz. Are they waiting him out until he gets old before they take the fight? I don’t know. I do know that if Joshua wants to be a billionaire, he needs to fight the guys while they’re still relatively still in their prime rather than waiting. That means Joshua should be fighting David Haye and Luis Ortiz in his next two fights against Wladimir, because those guys are getting older now.
Joshua blew his chance to get Haye before he lost to Tony Bellew. Now if Joshua fights Haye, the money likely will be a lot less because of his loss to Bellew. That’s bad decision making on Joshua’s part if you ask me. If you goal is to become a billionaire, you don’t make bad business decisions like not facing Haye while he’s still looking good. That’s another reason why I don’t think Joshua will become a billionaire. He’s not fighting the guys he needs to at the right time. He’s wasting too much time milking his IBF heavyweight title fighting the likes of Eric Molina and Dominic Breazeale instead of Haye, Ortiz and Joseph Parker. I’m just saying.
Right now, there are only a tiny handful of good paydays out there for Joshua. They are as follows:
Tyson Fury
Deontay Wilder
Wladimir Klitschko
Joseph Parker
David Haye
Tony Bellew
Joshua will likely never fight Haye, so you can take his name off the list. Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn hasn’t shown any urgency to make the Haye fight for some reason despite it being a huge fight. That’s a missed payday for Joshua. If his goal is to become a billionaire before he retires, he can’t exactly be skipping over popular fighters that would give him a big payday like Haye. After all, there’s only 6 guys in the sport that will give Joshua a big payday.
If he’s going to eliminate one of them for this or that reason, then it shows me that Joshua isn’t going to make it to the billionaire club. Another thing I noticed about Joshua and Hearn is they’re letting fights marinate too long. Joshua should have already fought Deontay Wilder a long time ago. He’s let that fight marinate too long. If Joshua is going to get to the billionaire club, then he’s going to need to fight Wilder 3 or 4 times to get as many paydays as possible, because one of the few popular guys.
Once Joshua has gone through the 6-fighter list, he’s going to be stuck fighting guys like Kubrat Pulev, Dereck Chisora, Dillian Whyte, Luis Ortiz, Jarrell Miller, Hughie Fury, Shannon Briggs and Andy Ruiz Jr. In other words, guys like the ones he’s already faced. Joshua isn’t going to get huge money fighting those fighters. He’s going to get good paydays but not $100 million per fight or even $50 million. Fighting all those guys will eat up years of Joshua’s career. By the time Joshua gets done with them, he won’t be young anymore. He’ll be in his early 30s, and that’s when I see the injuries popping up for him left and right.
Luke Campbell to face Darleys Perez on Anthony Joshua vs. Wladimir Klitschko card
2012 British Olympic gold medalist Luke Campbell (16-1, 13 KOs) will face struggling former WBA lightweight champion Darleys Perez (33-2-2, 21 KOs) in a WBA title eliminator on April 29 on the undercard of the Anthony Joshua vs. Wladimir Klitschko card on Sky Box Office pay-per-view at Wembley Stadium in London, England.
The winner of the Campbell-Perez fight will be the mandatory challenger to WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares. It’s unclear how or why the World Boxing Association is letting Campbell and Perez fight in their title eliminator rather than higher ranked contenders. I mean, Perez isn’t ranked at all in the top 15 in the WBA’s rankings, and he’s done horribly in his last 4 fights since 2015. Perez’s recent ring record since 2015 is 1-1-2. Perez fought to a draw in his last fight against Maurice Hooker last November.
Before that, Perez beat someone named Ubadel Soto (22-35-2), and then he lost to Anthony Crolla by a 5th round knockout in 2015. In his first fight with Crolla, Perez fought to a 12 round draw. In fairness to Perez, I thought he deserved wins his first fight against Crolla and in the Hooker fight. But you have to respect the judges’ decision. If you go by Perez’s actual record, he hardly deserves to be in a title eliminator. I don’t understand how Perez or Campbell can be fighting in a title eliminator because both of them are ranked so low by the WBA.
“We have identified Linares as a fight we want and this win would put us number one in the WBA and in a great position to fight him,” said Campbell to skysports.com. “I’m ready for a shot at the world title.”
What’s interesting is that Campbell is targeting Linares rather than WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia. Campbell is ranked higher by the WBC at #3 than he is with the WBA at #8. Why would Campbell go after Linares rather than Mikey Garcia? Doesn’t he fancy his chances against Mikey? I don’t understand that. It looks like a weak move to me on Campbell’s part to swerve Mikey Garcia in order to face a flawed champion like Linares. I don’t think Campbell would last more than 2 rounds against Mikey Garcia. We’ve already seen the stork-like 5’9” Campbell beaten by Yvan Mendy in 2015 in losing a 12 round decision. Campbell never avenged that loss. He’s won his last 4 fights against weak opposition in beating Jairo Lopez, Derry Mathews, Argenis Mendez and Gary Sykes.
Unfortunately for Campbell, I don’t see him getting a title shot against Linares if he beats Darleys Perez. Linares might opt to take a unification fight against someone like Terry Flanagan or Mikey Garcia. I can’t see Linares beating either of those guys. So yeah, Campbell might become the WBA mandatory challenger, but I think he’ll wind up having to fight someone like Mikey Garcia, and I that’s a bad match-up for him. If Mikey snatches the WBA title, I do not see Campbell facing him. I think he’ll look in another direction and go after Flanagan unless he gets beaten by Felix Verdejo. If that happens, Campbell will be out of luck because all the titles will be in the hands of talented fighters, and he won’t have an easy mark for him to capture a belt.
I think the WBA’s rankings are absolutely horrible right now. They don’t have the talented guys ranked like Denis Shafikov, Ray Beltran, Dejan Zlaticanin, Yvan Mendy, Richard Commey and Felix Verdejo. I don’t understand how the WBA doesn’t have any of those guys ranked.